The 1st tournament AI vs. Human (November the 11th, 2006)

Someday in the summer 2006, we were contacted by Bretislav Krcek of piskvorky.net, who proposed a match of the best brains against best Czech human players of their league. The match was set to November in a pub in Prague with following conditions:

best three programs will match three humans of piskvorky top ten

the best program will match the best player, the second will fight the second and for the third likewise, each match consisting of two duels

the time limit for match will be half an hour for each program and each human

we will use the equal opening shown on this picture

We played on three notebooks, two of them having speed of 1.6 Ghz while Goro, who didn’t need all of his time, played on a slower computer. The third best brain, HGarden, fought Tomas ‘Teovan’ Nemec. The match was quite equal, each duel was won by the player who started resulting in a draw. Second best brain, Tito matched Honza ‘Gadael’ Stradal. Of the three participating programs, Tito adapted the best way for the longer time limit and so he managed to defeat Gadael in both duels. The top match was between Goro and Pavel ‘Kedlub’ Laube. Goro didn’t exploit all the time available and he fell to Kedlub in both matches.

Overall, there was one victory, one defeat and one draw game for the humans. The results were influenced by the fact that brains aren’t adapted for the higher time limits while even the time limit of half an hour was considered insufficient by some human players. Some players would also prefer a quiter place than a pub. You can download some photos and matches and watch the matches using the P. Lastovicka’s Piskvorky manager. In the downloads, you’ll find the up-to-date versions of HGarden and Goro that participated.